Current standard keyboards are specifically designed for users typing in the English language. In order for a standard keyboard to be used for typing letters in other languages, it can easily be modified, by providing software computer means that supports this language. To assist the user, most of the letters of the other language can be printed on the keyboard beside the English letters. This enables the user to type in English mode or in the other language mode, whichever the user chooses.
The most reasonable solution for a user wishing to type letters of other languages is to obtain a special keyboard that comprises key buttons fitting for typing in the other language. However, these keyboards are not always available, and more so, for example if such a foreign language user is living, traveling or working in the USA and he only has a standard keyboard in his possession, then he can not type in his foreign language.
US 2006/0100848 describes a diacritic chording system uses a single standard keyboard layout to generate diacritical characters used, for example, by Latin-based languages or languages based on a Roman character set, providing a universal keyboard. The key combination required to select a diacritic is consistent, independent of the language the user is typing. The diacritic chording system uses chording to obtain characters modified by diacritics, i.e., diacritical characters. The key combinations in the diacritic chord are chosen in such a way to aid memorization by positional association of the keys or by logic association of the keys within the diacritic chord. The use of a combination of positional association and logical association eliminates conflicts in mapping diacritics for different languages. The diacritic chording system also provides a screen overlay as a mnemonic to illustrate which diacritic chords provide the desired diacritical character. However chording is not always user friendly. It can be complicated and take needless valuable extra time to implement.
An efficient way to type in the Arabic language is to obtain an Arabic keyboard. Using such Arabic keyboards enables the user to fully use the Arabic language. However, most Arabic language users who have only a standard keyboard can not type in Arabic, and they must improvise by typing in the Arabic language using Latin letters of a standard keyboard. This is used widely between Arabic chatters on the internet. However, there are many difficulties fully writing and fully expressing ideas in a correct manner using this type of improvisation, because there are Arabic letters which do not have corresponding Latin letters. Today, one of the improvised existing methods to overcome this problem is to use a combination of letters which sounds similar to the sound of the Arabic letter, or to use numbers to type some of the Arabic letters which look similarly to the numbers:                Typing “TH” is used instead of  and  but still there is a substantial difference between the two Arabic letters.        Typing “7” is used instead         Typing “5” or “KH” is used instead of         Typing “SH” or “CH” is used instead of         Typing “6” is used instead of         Typing “3” is used instead of         Typing “GH” is used instead of         
FIG. 1 shows a list of the Arabic characters and their corresponding Latin letters or clumsy improvisations.
As can be seen, these improvised methods are not satisfying, are not user friendly, they can be complicated and take needless valuable extra time to implement. Computer chatting, which is most efficient when implemented in a fast manner, is relatively slow in this case because it takes time for the user to find the most correct improvisation character. More so, even when using these improvised methods not all Arabic letters can be expressed using a standard keyboard (for example “TH” is used instead of  and  which sound differently, wherein one sounds like “TH” as in “THINK” and the other sounds like “TH” as in “THEY”). Also, in Arabic there are vowel points that are not letters but sounds and they are placed above or beneath the letters. Standard Arabic keyboards do not provide means for typing with added vowel points above or beneath the letters in a user friendly manner. The vowel points in a standard Arabic keyboard are dispersed throughout the keyboard. More so, in order to type vowel points, one must also press extra keys like SHIFT, which is not user friendly, and that takes extra needless time.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide means for typing all Arabic letters and characters on a standard keyboard while typing each of the letters and characters in an easy user friendly manner and a short period of time.
It is further an object of the present invention to provide means for typing in Arabic using Latin letters on a standard keyboard in an easy, user friendly manner without need for clumsy improvisations.
It is still an object of the present invention to provide means for typing in the Arabic language with added vowels points in a fast and easy user friendly manner.
Other objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent as the description proceeds.